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Hey, there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
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I'm Hansi Le Wang. I also cover voting.
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And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
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Today on the show, a landmark Supreme Court ruling out today that all but guts the Voting Rights Act. It could have a huge impact on black representation. Hansi, you've been following this case closely. Explain what the court ruled today.
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Well, this is a ruling by the Supreme Court's conservative majority, and it weakens the Voting Rights Act's protections against racial discrimination in redistricting. And the ruling comes out of specifically a case about Louisiana's congressional map. And. But it's important to point out this will affect redistricting around the country at all levels of government. You know, what the court ruled today specifically was that the second majority black congressional district that a lower federal court had ordered Louisiana's legislature to draw to get in line with the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court ruled that that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. And this was a decision that fell along ideological lines of court. Six conservative justices joined the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. Court's three liberals dissented.
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Okay, well, Hansi, can you walk us through a little bit of the background in terms of how this case arrived at the Supreme Court and the actual question that was being brought to scotus?
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There's a very complicated backstory, but I'll try to break this down. The 2020 census results came out, and they showed Louisiana had become a state where nearly one in three people are black. And using those results, Louisiana's Republican control legislature redrew the state's congressional map, and they drew only one majority black district. In other words, there's only one district out of six where black voters had a realistic opportunity to like their preferred candidate in a state where voting is racially polarized between a Republican supporting white majority and a Democratic supporting black minority. So a group of black voters in Louisiana sued under the Voting Rights Act Section 2. And ultimately a lower federal court ruled that the congressional map that Louisiana's legislature originally drew likely violated the Voting Rights act because it did not include a second majority black district. And so the legislature then under court order, redrew the map to include a second majority black district. And then a group of self described Quote, non African American voters from Louisiana sued. So another lawsuit comes up, and they argued that the map with two majority black districts is unconstitutional. Effectively, what the Supreme Court today has done has basically agreed with that group, this group of non African American voters. And this comes after the Supreme Court made a rare move of holding a second round of oral arguments in this very complicated case after already hearing oral arguments months earlier. And it has essentially knocked down a key remaining part of this landmark law from the civil rights movement.
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I think I was a little confused as I've been reading the initial coverage, because the court ruled that Section 2 of the Voting Rights act was not unconstitutional. But all the legal experts, in unison after this ruling came out, seem to be saying that it does the same thing, that it guts Section two and basically makes it toothless. Can you explain this?
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You know, technically speaking, today's ruling has not struck down Section 2's redistricting protections, but it has reinterpreted them in a way that will make them very, very har. To enforce. You know, let's take a step back here for a moment. You know, for decades, in places where voting is racially polarized, what's known as Section 2 of the Voting Rights act has helped make sure that racial minority voters aren't shut out when political maps are drawn, and that districts are drawn in a way that gives minority voters a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates. But what Justice Alito's majority opinion today says is that the focus of. Of that section, Section two, must be banning, quote, intentional racial discrimination. And what this effectively does is undo protections against discrimination that have not required proving in court that political map makers had the intention of discriminating against racial minority voters. You know, for decades, Section 2 protections were focused on any discriminatory effects of a redistricting plan. And I talked to Atiba Ellis after this ruling came out. He's a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. Here's how he described why this Supreme Court ruling will make it harder for anyone trying to challenge in court redistricting plans that they think are discriminating against racial minority voters.
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We, in essence, are asking plaintiffs now to find a smoking gun, the proof of the racist intent that is sort of objectively and consciously articulated in order to prove their case. The problem with discrimination cases is, is that most legislators in this context, know better than to say that. Right? They know better than to say that on the record, and they know better than to leave a paper trail, if
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you will, and if you don't have a paper trail, you don't have evidence of that, you're going to have a hard time proving in court that a map is discriminating against racial minority voters.
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Hansi, just to make this clear, the court said that if there is an intentional racial aspect to your redistricting plan, that's out of bounds unconstitutional. But they did say that partisan redistricting, where you purposely try to make a district that's helpful to your party, in this case Republicans in the south, that's something that the court is not going to get involved in at all.
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Right.
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Partisan discrimination, okay. Racial discrimination, not okay.
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Racial discrimination, not okay. But it's going to be harder to prove that in court going forward. And partisan gerrymandering is okay. To the extent that the Supreme Court has previously said that federal courts have no role in reviewing partisan gerrymandering claims, it's not going to play ref on that issue.
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Mara, are you surprised by how the Supreme Court ruled today?
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No, I'm not surprised at all. This is something in particular that John Roberts has cared about for 40 years. He believes racial discrimination is a thing of the past and race should have no role at all in redistricting or other other things that the court has jurisdiction over. So, no, I'm not surprised. And this was a pretty straightforward conservative, liberal split on the court. This wasn't a big battle for a couple swing justices. This was expected. The only thing that was unclear was the timing and when it would come.
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Well, and thinking about impact, Hansi, this is something you've been reporting on for months leading up to what many people expected to come, which has now come today. Talk about, I guess, what this could mean for minority representation.
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Well, the short answer is that this ruling will likely decimate representation of racial minority voters at all levels of government that involve redistricting and specifically in Congress. You know, this could lead to the largest ever decline in representation by black members of the House of Representatives in the history of the United States. You know, for a century after the Civil War, that number of black represented districts stayed in the single digits or at zero. But since the passing of the Voting Rights act of 1965, that number has grown to 63 black represented districts today, or about 14% of the current House. And losing even a handful of House districts that are presumably were protected up until this ruling came out, losing a handful of those districts could fuel the the largest ever drop in the number of black representatives in Congress. And the reason for that is that many redistricting experts expect. Now, with the Supreme Court ruling that Republican controlled State legislatures in the south particularly, will try to eliminate at least some Democratic represented House districts that were likely protected under the Voting Rights act, and they're represented currently by black members of Congress.
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Hansi, so what do you expect? If every state legislature was able to work as fast as humanly possible, how many black represented districts could they redraw? In other words, we're talking about 63 right now. 14% of the house districts have black representation. Where do you think it could settle? What would be the low point?
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It will likely be a very complicated political calculus that lawmakers, state lawmakers, will probably use to figure out what to do. They won't necessarily eliminate every likely Section two protected House district. But I did analysis earlier before this ruling came out. And there are at least 15 House districts in southern states from Louisiana and eastward to North Carolina, all with sizable minority populations represented by a black Democratic member of Congress. And, and those could be considered at risk districts. At least 15. But Republican led states may decide to keep some of those districts for partisan reasons. It may be politically useful for Republicans to keep Democrats concentrated in these districts.
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I mean, it does seem to me important also to see this in the broader context of the Voting Rights act and other rulings that have come in recent years from the Supreme Court related to the vra. Can you explain that a little bit?
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Well, this has been sort of a death by a thousand cuts to the Voting Rights act beginning more than a decade ago. Back in 2013, a case called Shelby county versus Holder that was a major blow to the Voting Rights act, specifically sections under that law that required states and counties that had a history of racial discrimination to get approval for any changes to election rules from the Justice Department or a federal court before those rules could be put in place. And the court's majority party in 2013, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, found that the coverage formula under what's known as Section 4B of the law, that that formula was unconstitutional. And that effectively suspended what was known as the pre clearance program under the Voting Rights Act. And after that, a pair of cases. Abbott v. Perez in 2018, Bernovitch versus DNC in 2021. You know, those two cases, the rulings out of them made it harder to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights act to challenge racial discrimination in the election process.
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Okay, let's take a quick break and more to talk about all the different potential impacts in just a moment.
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NPR reports stories that keep you informed without fear or favor. That's the promise of a free presence in a democracy. It's in the First Amendment. I'm Tom Bowman and I cover the Pentagon for npr. Stand up for independent news coverage today by donating early for public media giving days coming up on May 1st and 2nd. Give now at donate npr.org and we're back.
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And this Supreme Court decision could upend congressional districts in an election year that congressional districts are already being upended when states have already been engaged in this mid decade redistricting arms race. Hansi, do we have any sense? When could we start seeing maps shift to take the new normal into effect?
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Mississippi's Republican governor Tate Reeves announced very recently that he's already called for a special session to start 21 days before this ruling came out. So preparing in advance. And that session is supposed to be for redrawing the voting districts for the state Supreme Court, but a lot of folks are watching to see if that agenda expands to cover also the congressional districts of Mississippi. But it's really important to point out at this point of the year, it's late April. It's too late for many states to redraw their maps.
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But in terms of how this impacts in the short term, midterms, the reason that states can't just immediately go and redraw their maps is that because of filing deadlines or because of primaries or I guess what is the reason why? I mean, some voters are thinking probably like November elections aren't for another six months. Why can't states take this into effect?
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Well, Myles, all of the above, the elections is a process, as you know very well as a fellow member of the voting reporting team, involves way more than just the November general election. It's a process that really redistricting really has to end by a state's candidate filing deadline, which then kickstarts a long process, often behind the scenes, but certainly includes primary elections, which many states have already held and are about to hold in a few weeks. And candidates need to know what districts they're running in. And so to throw that all up in the air would certainly cause a lot of confusion for voters for election officials and will very likely invite legal challenges. But you know, it is an unprecedented mid decade gerrymandering fight that we're seeing right now. And so I wouldn't rule out any state trying to throw their hat in the ring again and try to redraw maps even in this very, very short to non existent window that they have.
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I mean, Mara, this ruling, as we've discussed, seems likely to have an outsized impact on Democrats. Do you see the party responding in some way? Do you expect the party to respond in some way?
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Sure. I mean, I think they'll respond in short term ways and long term ways. In the short term, I think, as Fonsi said, they're going to be going into court. They're going to be challenging the new Florida map. In the long term, I think they're going to be thinking about how they can appeal to white working class voters. If they can't depend on having African American voters advantaged by district lines. They're going to have to create a new multiracial working class coalition or non college educated coalition. And message. This is something they've already been talking about. I think this ruling makes the task more urgent. I don't think it's something that they were surprised by. But there's a lot of challenges to Democrats winning elections in the future. One of it is redistricting that got more urgent today. The other is just plain old demographics, where people live and where people are moving. You know, we're going to see after the 2030 census this reapportionment, which means how many districts and how many electoral college votes each state gets. The blue wall states where Democrats have built their national majorities. Those states are going to have fewer electoral college votes, and those votes are going to migrate to the south, to places like Florida and Texas and Georg. So Democrats have a lot of challenges right now. They are the party of college graduates. Whether you have a college degree or not is the biggest predictor of your partisan leaning. And there are just not enough college graduates in America for Democrats to rely on them only. So I think Democrats are going to do a lot of rethinking about how they become a majority party again and today just made it a little bit harder.
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Do you think, Hansi, that this ruling is going to impact black representation outside of Congress? I mean, is this something that we're going to be looking back on over the next few years at all levels of government?
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Yes. This is what voting rights experts are telling me. This is going to likely lead to a major, major shift, a decline in representation of racial minority voters, not just black voters, but also Latino voters in some parts of the country. And particularly we're talking about places where voting has been found to be racially polarized, that these were Protections before today's ruling under Section 2 of the Voting Rights act that allowed voting rights groups, groups of voters to challenge in court maps that they found was shutting out racial minority voters from having a chance to elect their preferred candidates because the maps are drawn in a way that dilutes, that weakens their voting power. And going forward now, local mapmakers for Congress, for state legislatures, for other levels of state and local government that require redistricting, you're going to have fewer rules for those map makers to follow. And particularly these are rules that were preventing racial discrimination.
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One thing on the political side of things, Mara, that I'm curious for your take on is, you know, Democrats have been pretty hesitant to bring up the idea of Supreme Court reform. But I wonder if this might change things. If there is, as we're talking about over the next couple years, a noticeable decline in representation of people of color at all levels of government, is that going to be something that turns SCOTUS reform into a more mainstream issue for the Democratic Party?
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Yeah, and I think it depends on what you mean by SCOTUS reform. There's packing the court, adding members of the Supreme Court, which I think is actually the least likely reform that the Democrats would take up. But then there's also the idea of term limits, 18 year terms for Supreme Court justices that would, once you did the transition, guarantee that each president would get get two nominations. That's something that I can see the Democrats championing. Of course, it would be hard to make it happen, but if you want to think about a political reform agenda that would make representation more fair, you could imagine Democrats advocating for proportional election of congressional members. In other words, a more parliamentary system where whoever gets X percent of the statewide vote for Congress, that's the percentage of the congressional delegation that that party would get. In other words, If Democrats got 55% of the statewide vote for Congress in a certain state, they'd get 55% of the members in that delegation. Now, you'd have slates of candidates running and they would be from each district. But that's one way that you could circumvent partisan gerrymandering. What happened today was a huge boost for what is already happening. In other words, we've got partisan gerrymandering on steroids. And gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights act just makes this even more exaggerated. I think that the difference between the statewide vote, the popular vote for Congress, and the actual representation in congressional districts is going to get wider and wider. We already have in some states where Republicans control the legislature that Republicans can get less than 50% of the statewide vote for Congress and end up or state legislature and end up with something like 70% of the seats because of the way the district lines are drawn. If you want to circumvent district lines and just do it by popular vote, in effect, you could circumvent that. Maybe Democrats will find that something that they want to promote.
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All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
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I'm Hansi Loong. I also cover voting.
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And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
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And thank you for listening to the NPR politics podcast Foreign.
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